Equipment: As previous with Doug’s spare doubles. Used his 10-lb v-weight and nothing else apart from my steel backplate. Necklace hose still needs to be a little longer. Generally this configuration is pretty good though.

Notes: Two dives at Sund Rock. The fist on the South wall and the second on the North wall (see also: this dive). Very nice diving. Saw a very big Wolf Eel and lots of fish. Vis very bad at shallower depths. Buoyancy continues to improve: using wing more at depth and the suit then provides almost automatic buoyancy control at shallower depths.

Equipment: Doug’s spare doubles. Weight: backplate + doubles with 8-lb v-weight (or 10-lb?, not sure). Used my 40-lb Halcyon wing. Had removed remaining weight pocket from Halcyon harness and replaced with D-ring. With no weight belt and no torch cannister, I now have nothing to hook long hose under on RHS. Tucked into harness instead, but this isn’t very satisfactory. Used thicker, 7mm, Scubapro gloves and hands were a bit better than previous dives. Still need to lengthen bungee for necklace and use longer short hose. Dive comp battery dead. Need to move to spare and get new spare.

Notes: Nice and easy at Mukilteo. Surfaced a bit closer to the ferry terminal than we would have liked but not dangerously close. The ferry got quite loud underwater at times. Hands very cold again, particularly the right one. Gloves may be too large.

Notes: First dive of 2016. Pottered around waking crabs on the first dive. On the second we tried S-drills (pretty rusty) and a free ascent with me shooting the bag and reeling it in, and Doug managing depth. Need to re-watch some GUE videos to revise those procedures. Buoyancy was generally ok, still improving with drysuit. Got the back-kick going once or twice but I need to be able to engage it better when doing drills.

Equipment: Tried using Doug’s spare doubles. Went pretty well. Weight: backplate + doubles with 8-lb v-weight + 1 3-lb weight. Used my 40-lb Halcyon wing. Seemed ok. Might not even need the 3-lb weight (if I did need it, a 10-lb v-weight would be much more convenient). Need to remove unused pocket from harness and replace it with SPG D-ring.

Notes: Very pleasant last dive of the year. This site is quite big. There are various artificial reefs formed by stacks of debris (mostly car tyres) at the north end. Then at the south there’s a sunken pleasure boat. We started at the north end and a mild current made it easy to make it all the way dawn to the boat. The vis wasn’t too bad considering the recent rain. Lot’s of fish and small crabs. Kicks are coming on. Buoyancy on ascent is coming on—fewer exaggerated movements required to vent gas from the suit. Need to revise GUE-EDGE, as well as min-gas calculations. Need also to consciously practise ascending on a line, when available, instead of just ascending with the slope of the bottom.

Recap for the year: 17 shore dives around Seattle. Gained some proficiency with drysuit. Got a GUE Fundies rec pass; benefits still being reaped. Need to move to doubles in the new year to begin working toward a Fundies tec pass.

Notes: First time joining the Seattle GUE crowd for the midweek ‘tweak’ dive at Cove 2. Unlucky with parking so I had a long walk in full gear. In the water then. Beady little glowing eyes of prawn, prawn, prawn, prawn, prawn, crab, prawn, prawn, prawn, crab, prawn, prawn. Octopus. Half a fish sticking vertically out of the seabed being molested by another fish. Many little fish. Bob had a red light. The vis was good. Bit of progress on the back kick and drysuit familiarity. Still digging the Xen. All very pleasant. Food at Matador after.

Notes: The Mukilteo Oil dock was reputedly a great dive site, however demolition has begun to prepare for the building of a new ferry terminal. Divers are no longer supposed to go to there because of the hazards due to demolition, but we went just to the periphery to have a look. We entered the water at the Mukilteo T Dock (see here) and scootered out a bit and then up, parallel with the shore line for about 10 minutes. I don’t have a scooter, so I hung on to Doug’s rear crotch D-ring. It worked ok.

Notes: Really nice dive site in Hood Canal (about 1 hr 40 mins from West Seattle), the main features of which are two walls, one to the north and another to the south. There’s a description here. Had to buy tickets ($16 pp + tax) from Hood Sport’n’Dive. This allowed us to park down at the dive site (the waterfront is privately owned).

We descended on a line and made our way to the South Wall and worked our way up to a plateau at about 20 ft (I’ve gone native and changed my gauge to Imperial units) from where Archis deployed an SMB and we ascended. We saw plenty of fish, big ones and large shoals of small ones, as well as a Wolf Eel and a good-sized Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. We dove the GUE standard 32% Nitrox. (I’m beginning to appreciate how much this simplifies things: It allows use of the 130 rule which states that with 32% oxygen, min-deco as achieved by maintaining the sum of the average depth in feet and the dive time in minutes at less than 130.)

This was dive #14 in dry suit. My buoyancy control was much improved. I think that on previous dives, buoyancy was worse because I focussed too much on the suit and forgot about the wing a bit (I realized today that when the suit feels tight with no detectable bubbles, the wing must be the source of buoyancy). I maintained careful awareness of depth and as we ascended the wall. I deliberately ascended in jumps of 5 ft or less and got nicely settled at each new depth before continuing. This worked quite well. I tried to maintain awareness of where in the suit it felt like there was air. When it was in the feet, I broke trim and straightened out, angling up so that it moved and I could dump it effectively.

Equipment: Kit in configuration established during the fundies course. I had to wear a weight belt because one of my BC pockets is away for repair (clip cracked). Had thicker 5-mm gloves which were much better in the cold water (clipping and unclipping was fine with them on). I used a single LP 104 tank. Pressure was 2900 PSI at the beginning of the dive.

Notes: Dive #13 in dry suit. Still struggling a bit getting air out. Air goes to my feet a bit and I can sort of deal with that but only by breaking trim really severely, in a way that makes me rise in the water so that I become even more buoyant. Maybe I should release some air from the wing before doing this. I really need a concentrated 4-6 dives over a few days to really work on this. Will have to make to with 1 a week at max for now though.

Equipment: As established during fundies course. I had to wear a weight belt because one of my BC pockets is away for repair (clip cracked). Removed 6 lb of my usual 16 lb to allow for fresh water. Might have been slightly under-weighted despite LP-104. Very cold–especially hands. Need thicker gloves.